The reports are rather sparse and clearly subject to news management, so we do not really know what is happening. The fact the prime minister is still in intensive care is enough to tell us he is very ill. He appears not to be getting worse at least, because if so he would be on a ventilator and he is not. He is apparently able to sit up in bed and talk to those caring for him. So while it remains an anxious time, especially for his loved ones and friends, there is optimism.
Meanwhile the country is gripped in perhaps the biggest health and economic crisis in modern history with a daily death toll reach startling levels and predicted to get worse still. The government, Boris’s government, having fluffed about at the start of the crisis in a fog of complacency, is now firing on all cylinders to correct all the things which should have been done better. They are doing their best and by any reasonable judgment they are at last doing it well. Of course there remains the great weaknesses of testing and protective equipment, the mishaps here having without doubt cost many lives, but little by little things are getting better.
However, many, too many, questions have been raised by commentators about who is in overall charge of the country and with what authority. The answer to the first is known, Dominic Raab, but the second remains opaque. It need not. During the WWII Attlee often took over for Churchill, who had several bouts of pneumonia. When Eden fell ill after Suez it was RA Butler, who again stepped in when Macmillan was in hospital. Attlee was formally Churchill’s deputy and when in the final months of Churchill’s second premiership, the old man suffered a stroke, Eden, his known successor, ran the country from the foreign office.
Right now things are less clear. The government is a new one and the dynamics of power personalities has not had time to develop. All the lead jobs are with newly promoted second tier ministers, with the exception of Gove. So why Raab? Perhaps because he is said to be very good at detail, Boris’s weak spot. And perhaps because whatever he does he could not possibly outshine Boris. But the ambiguity should end. First among equals is too pompous a mouthful and actually meaningless to ordinary people. Every team has to have a captain. A captain on the field of play. Butler used the term Acting Head of Government. Maybe that’s how Raab should be referred to. Then we know who is in charge for the moment, but the assumption remains that Boris will be back.
That would end the speculation. Remember while all this is making news people are dying. Hundreds of them every day. And NHS staff, care workers and workers in essential services and industries, millions of them, are risking their lives, and too often losing them, for the greater good of us all. That is the story.